Quarterly HOA dues at Hawks Landing buy a lot: a 24-hour manned gatehouse, lawn care, trash pickup, and access to a $15 million Mediterranean-style clubhouse with seven lighted Har-Tru tennis courts. Two of those courts now double as pickleball courts since the clubhouse renovation. That is the private version of the sport inside the gate.
A short drive away, at Plantation Central Park on NW 2nd Street, the city maintains 17 outdoor pickleball courts. They are lit for night play, they require no membership, and nobody checks your address at the gate. If you are a Hawks Landing resident who plays pickleball more than a few times a month, the math is worth doing before you assume the club courts are your only option.
What the club actually offers
The Hawks Landing Club is built around tennis first. Seven Har-Tru courts host clinics, round robins, and member tournaments year-round, with a nationally recognized USTA champion serving as tennis director and running programs for kids as young as four. Pickleball got added to two of those courts as the sport grew, which means on a busy evening you are sharing a small footprint with tennis players, private lessons, and whatever else is on the club calendar that week. Reservations and priority go to residents and their guests, which is exactly what you would expect from an amenity your dues are paying to maintain.
That setup works well if you want structured play: a lesson, a club tournament, an evening with neighbors you already know. It works less well if you want to show up at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday and get into an open game within twenty minutes.
The 17 courts nobody behind the gate mentions
Plantation Central Park is where the city's pickleball actually lives. Seventeen dedicated outdoor courts, free to use, lit for evening play, no reservation system. You bring a paddle, you check in with whoever is running the rotation, and you play.
That rotation matters. On busy evenings, players describe a four-on, four-off system to keep games moving instead of one match running the clock while a line forms behind it. It is not glamorous, but it works, and it means a court opens up faster than you might expect even when the park looks crowded.
| Location | Courts | Cost | How you get on | Busiest times |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hawks Landing Club | 7 Har-Tru tennis courts, 2 lined for pickleball | Included in HOA dues | Resident and guest priority, club scheduling | Weekday evenings, per club calendar |
| Plantation Central Park | 17 outdoor pickleball courts | Free | First-come, no reservations | Roughly 8 to 11 a.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. |
If you want an easier court that day, mornings before 11 a.m. are your best bet. If you can only play after work, expect to wait through a rotation or two before evening peak hours ease off closer to 9.
A few things worth knowing before you go:
- Nets are portable and provided on site, but nobody is renting out paddles, so bring your own.
- The courts are concrete, not the Har-Tru surface you get behind the gate, which changes footing and ball bounce if you are used to the club.
- Parking has not been a reported problem even during peak hours, which is not something every public court in Broward County can say.
None of this makes the club courts obsolete. It means the club is the right call for a private lesson or a Saturday tournament, and the public courts are the right call for a spontaneous Tuesday night game with a bigger, more varied pool of players than seven club courts can offer on their own.
The one thing Hawks Landing genuinely cannot offer
Tennis and pickleball are one conversation. Dogs are a different one entirely, and here the private amenities inside Hawks Landing hit a real limit.
The community's 1.6-mile main road and its sidewalks around the lakes make for a pleasant leash walk, and that is precisely what it is: a leash walk. There is no off-leash space inside the gate, and there should not be an expectation of one in a residential HOA community built around waterfront lots and shared common areas.
The only legal off-leash option in the entire city sits at Seminole Park, a short drive from Hawks Landing. Happy Tails Dog Park covers five acres and splits into three distinct sections: a leash-free run for large dogs, a separate area sized for dogs 25 pounds and under, and a dedicated space built for agility work. The park is also home base for the Plantation Canine Unit, so it is not an afterthought tucked behind a strip mall. It is a real municipal facility with restrooms, pavilions, and parking built for the purpose.
City rules are specific about why this particular park matters so much:
Dogs are NOT permitted in any other City parks.
That single sentence is the whole reason Happy Tails carries more weight than its five acres might suggest. It is not one option among several. It is the option, for the entire city of Plantation.
Right now, in late August, the park runs on its summer schedule: open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, except Wednesdays when it opens at noon and closes at 6 p.m. for maintenance. That schedule shifts once November hits, when hours contract to 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the cooler months. If you are timing an evening visit after work, the current window gives you real daylight to work with, at least until the schedule resets for fall.
The park also hosts organized events beyond daily off-leash time. This past January, the city ran Doggie-Palooza at Happy Tails, a community dog gathering built around exactly the kind of low-key, local-first programming that gives a five-acre park more identity than its size suggests.
What this actually means if you live here
The picture that emerges is not that Hawks Landing's amenities fall short. It is that they were built for a specific kind of recreation: private, scheduled, resident-first. That is what a gated community with a country club feel is supposed to deliver, and on tennis specifically, it delivers well.
But pickleball outgrew the two courts anyone converted for it, in Hawks Landing and in most private communities built before the sport's current popularity. The real infrastructure for casual, high-volume, walk-up pickleball in Plantation is public, free, and a short drive from the guardhouse. And for dog owners, there was never a private substitute to begin with. Happy Tails is not a nice-to-have alternative. It is the only place in the city where the leash comes off.
Knowing both of these things changes how you plan a week here. The club is for lessons, tournaments, and the version of tennis your dues were built to support. Central Park is for the Tuesday night game you didn't plan in advance. And Happy Tails is for the exercise your dog cannot get on a sidewalk, no matter how well maintained that sidewalk is.
None of this shows up in a listing sheet or a clubhouse brochure. It shows up when you actually live here long enough to test where the real games happen.
If you're weighing a move into Hawks Landing or already call it home and want a clearer read on how the community's amenities stack up against what the city offers, Colleen Rodriguez & Duffy Dillon know this neighborhood block by block. Schedule a free consultation and get answers grounded in what's actually here, not just what's on the amenity list.
